"Gray Power"

Great article from the Atlantic on how companies can recycle energy and save millions:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/recycled-steam

Trash pickers save the environment

"Scorned trash pickers become global environmental force"

Here's a great story about how countries around the world are recycling at extremely high rates, not thanks to government policy but to "trash pickers" in impoverished urban centers. Here's the story, thanks to the Huffington Post:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/jack_chang/story/31468.html

Recycling: Office Paper

In 2003, only 48.3% of office paper was recovered for recycling.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Recycling Rates of Different Materials

52 percent of all paper, 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging, and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled.

From the EPA.

Recycling Factoids: Curbside Programs

By 2006, about 8,660 curbside collection programs served roughly half of the American population.

From the EPA.

That's up from only one program twenty years ago, which is very impressive, but what about the half of the population without access to curbside recycling?

The Growth of Recycling Programs

Recycling, including composting, diverted 82 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2006, up from 34 million tons in 1990.

From the EPA.

Recycling Factoids: Recycled Paper

Making paper from recycled paper reduces air pollution by 95%.

National Recycling Coalition

Recycling Factoids: Glass

This post kicks off our March focus on recycling.

From Earth 911:

Recycled glass saves 50% energy vs. virgin glass (Center for Ecological Technology)

Recycling of one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 4 hours (EPA)

Recycled glass generates 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution (NASA)

1 ton of glass made from 50% recycled materials saves 250 lbs. of mining waste (EPA)

Glass can be reused an infinite number of times; over 41 billion glass containers are made each year (EPA)

Paper Factoids: Water Use in Paper Manufacturing

The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in OECD countries and is the third greatest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, after the chemical and steel industries (OECD Environmental Outlook, p. 218)

From the Environmental Paper Network

What we throw away and what we recycle

Source: EPA

Paper Factoids: Paper in our Landfills

Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste). Municipal landfills account for one third of human-related methane emissions (and methane is 23-times more potent a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide).

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Recycling and Global Warming

In 2000, recycling of solid waste prevented the release of 32.9 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCE, the unit of measure for greenhouse gases) into the air.

National Recycling Coalition

Paper Factoids: NYC Recycles?

Each year in New York City we throw away 400,000 tons of recyclable paper.

Campaign to Reduce Paper: Change the Margins

The Campaign To Change the Margins:

Tamara Krinsky has devised an elegantly simple campaign that should warm the heart of anyone trying to promote sustainable living: reduce the default margin setting on your word-processing program. She has helpfully tallied up some of the environmental benefits if every American reduced the margin setting to .75" on all sides of their documents (from the current default of 1.25").

we would save:

-6,156,000 trees

-9,840,368 million British thermal units (Btus), which is enough energy to provide power to 108,136 homes

- 1,459,535,366 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, which is equivalent to the emissions of 132,528 cars

-584,396,539 lbs of solid waste, which is the equivalent of 20,871 fully loaded garbage trucks

- 4.8 billion gallons wastewater, which is enough to fill 7,408 Olympic-sized swimming pools

Comment:
Tamara Krinsky's site should serve as a model for those trying to devise green campaigns. She has a very specific proposal that could not be simpler to implement. It will yield significant cost savings in addition to the environmental benefits. It does away with a usually invisible form of waste, for which there is no benefit: having extra white space surrounding your documents does nothing to improve them, and eliminating it will not affect any conceivable performance measure.

She has also focused on a handful of corporate and institutional targets who could serve as a first wave in the widespread adoption of this measure. Her site includes a petition to Microsoft to adjust the default settings on their software, which would probably accomplish the goals of her campaign without the necessity of persuading a single word-processor--for how many people would go back and change the settings? Until then, however, it is up to us to put in place her excellent recommendations and spread the word to our friends and colleagues.

See Change the Margins for more on the benefits of reducing the margins on your documents.

Carbon Tax / Green Tax websites

There is a growing movement (I hope!) recognizing the value of Carbon Taxes (aka, Green Taxes, Tax Shifting). The basic idea is we should tax the stuff we hate (pollution, carcinogens) and stop taxing things we want more (employment).

There are a few great sites on the web -- some that just popped up recently -- explaining the issue. Here are the links:

http://www.carbontax.org/


http://www.sightline.org/research/taxes
Run by Alan Durning, author of a great book on the topic, "TAX SHIFT":


http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto.html
Run by Economist Greg Manciw, it is a conservative economists' argument for Green Taxes.

The Libertarian/Conservative argument for Green Taxes:

http://www.holisticpolitics.org/GlobalWarming/ConservativeCase.php
Great quote in favor of replacing Income Taxes with Carbon Taxes: "Real conservatives really hate the income tax—even more than they hate hippie environmentalists. This should be an easy sell."

The Liberal/Environmentalist argument:

Friends of the Earth:
http://www.foe.org/camps/eco/taxreform/index.html

Paper Factoids: Paperless Bills

According to Javelin Strategy and Research, here are some of the benefits if all U.S. households viewed and paid bills online:

o Saves 2.3 million tons of wood, or 16.5 million trees.
o Reduces fuel consumption by 26 million BTUs - enough energy to provide residential power to San Francisco for an entire year.
o Decreases toxic air pollutants by 3.9 billion pounds of CO2 equivalents (greenhouse gases), akin to having 355,000 fewer cars on the road.
o Reduces toxic wastewater by 13 billion gallons, enough to fill almost 20,000 swimming pools.
o Lowers solid waste generated by 1.6 billion pounds - equal to 56,000 fully loaded garbage trucks.
o Removes 8.5 million particulates and 12.6 million nitrogen oxides from the air - on par with taking 763,000 buses and 48,000 18-wheelers off the streets.

Paper Factoids: Recycling in NYC

Recyclable paper makes up about 15% of New York City’s refuse—materials put out for regular garbage collection instead of recycling.

Paper Factoids: Recycled Vs. Virgin

Compared to using virgin wood, paper made with 100% recycled content uses 44% less energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less particulate emissions, 50% less wastewater, 49% less solid waste and -- of course --uses 100% less wood.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Recycled Content of Different Types of Paper

Recovered paper accounts for 37% of the U.S. pulp supply. Printing and writing papers use the least amount of recycled content -- just 6%. Tissues use the most, at 45%, and newsprint is not far behind, at 32%.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Office Paper Use

The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets (20 reams) of copy paper each year.

Office Paper at reduce.org

Paper Factoids: Electricity Needed to Make Paper

Production of 1 ton of copy paper uses 11,134 kWh (same amount of energy used by an avg household in 10 months)

1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets

GreenPrint

GreenPrint is a software program that helps companies and individuals eliminate wasteful and unnecessary printing.

Paper Factoids: Reducing Office Paper

If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% (or about 2 reams per office worker) it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Deforestation and CO2 Emissions

Deforestation currently contributes about a fifth of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

The New York Times.

Paper Factoids: Percentages of Different Kinds of Paper

From the Environmental Paper Network

US Paper and Paperboard Production, 2000 (AF & PA)

Paper Factoids: Harvesting Forests

Most of the world’s paper supply, about 71 percent, is not made from timber harvested at tree farms but from forest-harvested timber, from regions with ecologically valuable, biologically diverse habitat. (Toward a Sustainable Paper Cycle: An Independent Study on the Sustainability of the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1996)

From the Environmental Paper Network.

Paper Factoids: What We Throw Away

Americans throw away enough office paper each year to build a 12-foot high wall stretching from New York to San Francisco—that's 10,000 or so sheets per person!

From reduce.org

Paper Factoids: US vs. the World

The United States, which has less than 5% of the world's population, consumes 30% of the world's paper.

From reduce.org

Paper Factoids: American Paper Consumption

The average American consumes more than 700 pounds of paper a year -- that's the world's highest per capita figure.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Copy Paper

Printing and writing paper account for about one-half of U.S. paper production.

From reduce.org

In Honor of Dr. King

"I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the "oughtness" that forever confronts him....

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."

Speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, December 11, 1964.

Reduce Your Catalog Waste

Looking for a quick and easy way you can help "save the planet"...? Here's one! www.catalogchoice.org

Each year, 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers--more than 170 per household each year. What’s the impact?

*Number of trees used – 53 million

*Paper used – 3.6 million tons

*Energy used to produce this volume of paper – 38 trillion BTUs, enough to power 1.2 million homes per year

*Waste water discharges from this volume of paper – 53 billion gallons of water, enough to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools

*Contribution to global warming – 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equal to the annual emissions of two million cars

www.catalogchoice.org offers a FREE SERVICE that eliminates unwanted catalogs from your mailbox! You choose which catalog you still want to get and which ones to remove. Your information stays private.

Pass it along and help save the world!!!

Paper Factoids: Bills Bills Bills!

Hard copy bills generate almost 700,000 tons of waste and almost two million tons of carbon dioxide.
From The Green Guide.

Solution: Paperless e-billing.

Paper Factoids: Trees into Paper

42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Paper Factoids: Industrial Greenhouse Emissions

The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector's carbon emissions.

From "15 Facts about the Paper Industry, Global Warming and the Environment" at The Daily Green.

Setting Priorities: My family in 2008

Having used last week's post to sum up my family’s achievements in reducing our carbon footprint during 2007, I will continue in the January tradition by forming resolutions for 2008. This is not quite as feel-good a process as tallying up our victories. For one thing, we have made a lot of the easier (for us) changes. Most of our bulbs are CFLs, we are very conscientious about recycling, we even compost; as New Yorkers we already rely heavily on public transportation. Other potential changes— for example reducing air travel or canceling our two newspaper subscriptions—would require actions that go by the highly-charged name of “sacrifice.” Changing to CFLs and starting worm composting felt like improvements—they saved money or were interesting. Cutting our newspapers would require reading them online which I hate.

But without making specific promises that may not be met, here are some areas that I would like our family to emphasize in the coming year:

Target #1: Reduce Paper
Switch the rest of my accounts to online billing
Reduce the deluge of junk mail and catalogues
Reduce paper at work

Target #2: Food
Reduce our consumption of meat
Increase our consumption of fruit, vegetables, and legumes
Make more of an effort to get “local” food
Stop drinking bottled water
Reduce food waste


Starting with target #1, reducing paper:

At a recent Green Drinks, a monthly "meet and greet" for New Yorkers concerned about environmental issues, two people separately admitted that they do not recycle at all. Given New York's mandatory but also fairly user-friendly program, I found that somewhat disheartening--if even environmentalists can't be bothered, it is hard to see how New York is going to increase its already modest participation rates which appear stuck at about 50%.

So to encourage holdouts to begin recycling and everyone to reduce paper, Green Factoids will devote the next series of posts to facts about paper.

Setting Priorities: Which Activities Have The Most Impact?

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists' Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, the following consumer activities are the most harmful to the environment:

Cars and light trucks
Meat and poultry
Fruit, vegetables, and grain
Home heating, hot water, and air-conditioning
Household appliances and lighting
Home construction
Household water and sewage

The Union analyzes the impact of each of these activities on global warming, air and water pollution, and habitat alteration.

Looking at the environmental impact per household on global warming:
32% can be attributed to transportation
35% to household operations
12% to food

Taking Stock: 2007

Green Factoids returns after a 2 month hiatus during which work pressures left little time for other activities. I will brave the risk of falling into the well-worn cliches of the season in order to look at what I have personally accomplished in the past year in my goal to develop a more sustainable lifestyle.

Successes:

I have managed to cut my family’s monthly and daily electricity use roughly in half. After 6 months of tracking our use, I can confidently say that our low kWh readings are not a fluke. I have made the following changes which have helped bring this about (in order of impact):
1. switching every light-bulb I can to CFLs, especially in the most heavily used rooms
2. becoming much more careful about not leaving lights on
3. using our 350 watt halogen fixtures as little as possible
4. replacing our ancient air-conditioner with an EnergyStar model
5. cutting way back on our air-conditioning
6. adjusting the controls so that my computer sleeps after 2 minutes
7. putting my printer, modem, computer and hard drive on a power strip and turning them off most nights

I switched our electricity supplier to one that relies on wind and low-impact hydro-electric.

I switched from traveling by car to traveling by subway on roughly half my commutes.

I started worm composting in my apartment.

I made “sustainability” an express issue on the syllabus of the courses I teach, emphasizing strategies for reducing paper. In addition to distributing all assignments by email, I encouraged my students to hand in their essays printed on the clean side of scrap paper—of whatever color. I set the example by printing my exams and other materials on scrap paper. I also asked that they eliminate title pages and other opportunities for white space and waste. I would estimate that about a third of my students took advantage of my request, saving about 300 sheets of virgin paper. I also printed out the final essay (submitted by email) on scrap paper, saving about another 300 sheets. Not exactly an enormous reduction of impact, but I believe that the gesture raised my students’ awareness of sustainability in a low-key way that did not involve preaching or departing from the “official” curriculum—18th-century literature. I believe that those students who participated have likely changed their paper habits permanently—as have I. I am going to continue to do this for all of my classes, and also suggest it to my colleagues.